Teaching Strategies for Multicultural Students at BIPAS, Udayana University

Ni Ketut Sri Rahayuni

English Department, Faculty of Arts, Udayana University

[email protected]

Abstract

The relationship between teacher and student involves not just instruction, but interaction. When interaction fails because of teacher misperceptions of student behavior, instructional failure will often follow. This is in line with teaching BIPAS students who come from different countries. Teachers should use certain teaching strategies in order to meet the students’ need and make the learning process successful. The aims of this research are to find out the teaching strategies and the situation of students-teacher interactions and students-students interactions in multicultural classrooms of BIPAS Program, Udayana University in Bahasa Indonesia classes. Malone (2012) stated that communicative approaches and instructional techniques are required to teach second language. The data was collected through a classroom observation and the documentation method through video recording during the classroom interaction was done to get the supporting data. It was found that communicative approach through emphasis on learning to communicative through classroom interaction, and cooperative learning such as small group discussion and pair work/discussion become the effective teaching strategies used for multicultural students at BIPAS, Udayana University. Both teacher-student interaction and student-student interaction are applied for multicultural students in the classroom.

Keywords: multicultural students, teaching strategies, interaction, communicative approach

I INTRODUCTION

Bali International Programs of Asian Studies (BIPAS) is one of the seven international programs offered by the Center for International Programs (CIP), Udayana University. In this program, students/participants learn the Asian Studies, especially Balinese language and cultures. The subjects offered in this program are Bahasa Indonesia, Indonesian History, Ethnology, Culture and Customs, Economy and Business of South East Asia, International Tourism Management, International Business, Environmental Management and Sustainability, International Relations and Communication, International Entrepreneurship, Global Marketing, Business Law and Legal Tradition on Trade and Investment

In 2017, the students/participants come from 11 different European countries and The United States; those are Finland, Germany, Sweden, France, Denmark, Netherland, Czech Republic, and The United States. Every country in this world has different cultures in terms of their language, behavior, and art. Therefore, there are multicultural students/participants in a classroom, and the strategies used in teaching them are different from the hetero-cultural class.

Smith (2009) states that teachers need to think about different ways of teaching that might enable them to create better classroom activities for particular students and tailor instruction to their needs. The relationship between teacher and student involves not just instruction, but interaction. When interaction fails because of teacher misperceptions of student behavior, instructional failure will often follow. This is in line with teaching BIPAS students who come from different countries. Teachers should use certain teaching strategies in order to meet the students’ need and make the learning process successful.

Based on the background explained, this research focuses on two main problems. Those problems are the teaching strategies used and the students’ interactions in multicultural classrooms of BIPAS Program.

II MATERIALS AND METHODS

Shaheena Choudhury in her article titled Interaction in Second Language Classrooms (2005) explained about teaching multicultural students. During her teaching experience with different cultural background, she mentioned that the teacher is also a facilitator that learns new cultures, tried to be sensitive on those differences. The teacher’s interest in students’ cultures will also motivate them to inform more details about their culture.

Merfat Alsubaie in the journal article titled Examples of Current Issues in Multicultural Classroom (2015) stated that teachers who learn more about their student’s backgrounds, cultures and experiences

will feel more capable and efficient in their work as teachers. Flexibility is more important than knowledge in dealing with multicultural students.

The data sources in this research are students studied in BIPAS program batch 16. This batch was held from January to May 2017. The students were from Finland, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Netherland, France, and Norway. The data source was specifically taken from the students of Bahasa Indonesia class C1 and D1 consists of 25 students for each class. The class was held in 100 minutes. The students in this class come from Germany (12 students), Finland (10 students), Sweden (2 students), Netherland (1 student). Indonesian Language is taught twice a week, on Monday and Tuesday.

The data was collected through a classroom observation. The students were observed in order to know which strategies are suitable for them due to different culture and learning behavior that they have. Furthermore, the documentation method through video recording during the classroom interaction was done to get the supporting data.

Teaching is the state of the art of a teacher. Different teaching strategy is nowadays needed for different purposes, in this case, it is based on the students’ needs, the subjects taught in the classroom, and also the different cultural background of the students, especially for multicultural students in a classroom. Students in BIPAS program needs certain teaching strategies to make the learning goals successful. Malone (2012) stated that communicative approaches and instructional techniques are required to teach the second language. The communicative approach meant is related to CLT (Communication Language Teaching) that is designed for the classroom principles, those are “1) an emphasis on learning to communicate through interaction in the target language; 2) the introduction of authentic texts into the learning situation; 3) an enhancement of the learner’s own personal experiences as important contributing elements to classroom learning; and 4) an attempt to link classroom language learning with language activities outside the classroom.” In line with the communicative approach, Malone also describes the instructional techniques that are incorporated into the second language learning with good success like TPR, cooperative learning (small group, pairs), language experience approach, dialogue journals, academic language scaffolding, L1 support for L2, accessing learner’s prior knowledge, and the last but not least, culture studies.

According to Sinclair and Coulthard (1975), the individual motivation from the students, response both for students and teacher, and evaluation of the student’s performance (known as IRE exchange) are three important things in teaching and learning process. Regards to the BIPAS students’ interaction in the classroom, those parameters were applied. The qualitative method by explaining descriptively the process of interaction and teaching strategy in BIPAS Bahasa Indonesia classroom was used in analyzing the data.

  • III RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Students’ first languages and Bahasa Indonesia have different structures and grammar. There are some difficulties faced by the students in learning Bahasa Indonesia in BIPAS. BIPAS students are from European countries such as Finland, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, etc. Most of those students didn’t use English as their national language. They used their languages when they talk to friends from the same country. They used English when they communicate with the students from different country. They spoke English not only when they meet their friends in the classroom but also when they meet each other during the breaktime outside the classroom.

  • 3.1  TEACHING STRATEGIES IN MULTICULTURAL CLASSROOMS AT BIPAS

It was found through the classroom observation that there are three common mistakes done by the multicultural students.

  • 3.1.1    INDONESIAN NOUN PHRASE CONSTRUCTIONS

Example: ibu saya ÷ saya ibu

When students composed a sentence in Bahasa Indonesia, some of them still made mistakes in terms of the noun phrase constructions. The English noun phrase strongly influences this process. Even when it’s already half of the semester, some students still made those mistakes.

  • 3.1.2    AFFIXES

Example:        di ÷ diajar, ditulis

meN- + ajar ÷ mengajar

+ baca ÷ membaca

+ sewa ÷ menyewa

Some students had difficult time to understand and remember some rules of the meN-constructions. The reason is because to many rules about this constructions while they have only limited time to learn about this verb within a semester.

  • 3.1.3    COMPLEX NOUN

Example : perpustakaan, pemerintahan, mengendarai

From the observation, the communicative approach which emphasizes on communicative learning (two-way communication) is the strategy applied for teaching multicultural students at BIPAS. Both English and Indonesian are used in the explanation of the materials, i.e. the 1st – 4th meetings English was mostly used, and in the 5th – 16th meetings both English and Indonesian were used.

In teaching grammar of Bahasa Indonesia, the teacher used English in the beginning of semester dominantly because all students are beginners in learning Bahasa Indonesia. If the teachers taught them using Bahasa Indonesia, they would get confused in understanding all the information given. The most important thing for the beginner students of Bahasa Indonesia is that they can understand the meaning of each word, the structure of a sentence.

Teachers gave presentation in power point format to explain about grammatical and vocabularies of Bahasa Indonesia. Later on after the class finished, the teacher also shared it to all students into dropbox that both teacher and student have. Besides giving presentation, teachers also provided flashcards related to vocabularies discussed in that meeting.

  • 3.2    STUDENTS’ INTERACTION IN THE CLASSROOM

There were two kinds of interaction in the classroom activities of multicultural students at BIPAS, those were student-student interaction (happened when they practiced speaking) and teacher studentinteraction (happened in explaining the materials and essay writing, in which the teacher evaluated the grammar and contents of students’ essays.

Picture 1. Students Interaction on Group Discussion and Practices of Asking and Answering Questions

Picture 2. Students Interaction on Group Discussion and Practices of Asking and Answering Questions

Picture 3. Student and Teacher Interaction through teacher’s explanation on writing the essay

Picture 4. Student and Teacher Interaction on giving instruction of how to make Canang (an offering)

The students’ interaction in the classroom is reported that in order to ascertain whether each student knows the topic/material, teacher asks a known-answer question individually (I):

  • a)    English is the dominant language used in the first and second meetings.

  • b)    The third meeting and the rests: students were asked to do pair or group conversation and teacher mixed the group so they automatically get along with other students from different home university or country.

The student was expected to provide a brief response (R): Some instructions from teachers related to topics given including asking them to replying to the teacher’s questions.

  • a)    Most students were passive in the beginning. Teachers needed to give more efforts to make them respond to the questions or even to make them smile.

  • b)    Some students were friendlier than the others. But in some situation, the students gave more comments or even complaints because they expected perfection on the program.

Students’ test results were corrected and evaluated by the teacher, and the feedback from teacher was given to the students. This process was done in order to share the noted mistakes made by them in composing some sentences.

IV CONCLUSION

Communicative approach through emphasis on learning to communicative through classroom interaction, and cooperative learning such as small group discussion and pair work/discussion become the effective teaching strategies used for multicultural students at BIPAS, Udayana University. Teacherstudent interaction and student-student interaction are applied for multicultural students in the classroom.

REFERENCES

Alsubaie, Merfat Ayesh. 2015. Examples of Current Issues in the Multicultural Classroom. Journal of Education and Practice, Vo. 6, No. 10, 2015, pp.86-89: Department of Educational Leadership, Research and Technology, Western Michigan University.

Choudhury, Shaheena. 2005. Interaction in Second     Language Classrooms. BRAC University

Journal,        Vol. II, No. 1, 2005, pp. 77-82: Department of English and Humanities

BRAC University, 66 Mohakhali C/A Dhaka – 1212, Bangladesh.

Malone, D. 2012.Theories and Research of Second Language Acquisition. Bangkok: MLE WS.

Sinclair, J. & Coulthard, M. (1975). Towards an analysis of     discourse:  The English  used by

teachers and pupils. London: Oxford University Press.

Smith, Earl Bradford. 2009. Approaches to Multicultural       Education  in  Preservice Teacher

Education     Philosophical Frameworks and Models for Teaching.